Shall I give up on salvation
And suppose the unit of life isn’t the self.
As I always assumed, but the twenty houses

As you might expect, my momentary vision barely
qualifies: you know, sensation something like the merest
swoon, some uncertainty about why all of a sudden

On the chine of the first white inkling of the winter
The Ravenmaster wraps his limbs in combs of wind.

It is November; the tower closes down

I watch your hospital TV as you sleep,
two weeks you sleep, while men walk
in a silent movie, their world eroding

In Jaime’s picture of the world, a heart
As big as South America shines out,
The center of the only ocean. Three
Stick figures (one is labeled “me”) are drawn
Beside the world, as if such suffering
Could make us more objective. Jaime’s bald

I know this really isn’t Spain. But still,
You’d think I’d find my father here, his lips
On every cup. You’d think the holly bush
Weren’t quite so sharp. I think Rumanian
Is coming from my favorite table in
The back. Are all these people reading Lorca?

I didn’t know there could be so many silences
listening in on our conversation,
or having their own conversations

  A daffodil from Emily’s lot
I lay beside her headstone
on the first day of May.

The prince is waving good-bye. Good-bye Prince,
we shout as he ascends the steps of his coach,
Good-bye! Then he is gone with a contagion

On his knees, his back to us: the pale honeydew melons of his
        bare buttocks, the shapely, muscular hemispheres—

        the voluptuous center.